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With Christmas approaching, businesses large and small all around the country are trying their best to attract sales, in whatever ways possible. Most companies have (by this point) figured out that giants like amazon.com are destroying smaller brick-and-mortars (and even other large corporations), and the major difference (and the way that Amazon has been able to succeed) is by having an extremely strong online presence.

While reading this post may inspire you to pop open your laptop and start lighting up your social media accounts immediately, you might want to think about that for just a minute. There’s a difference between quantity and quality of posting in the social media world, and if you’ve ever blocked or removed someone for posting excessive requests for you to buy things, or for sending too much spam e-mail, for instance, you probably realize that there’s a fine line between marketing and annoying your customer base.

So how then, do you make your social media work for you? The clear and simple answer is to be engaging. It’s not about the number of posts or even when or how you post, it’s about how often customers are engaging with you. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that they’re just viewing your post, but that they are liking it, commenting it, and even (the best one of all), sharing your post with others. Engagement, or the act of interacting with content, is the holy grail of the social media marketing world.

With that said, here are five tips to make your social media extra engaging:

Create unique content that’s relevant — We all don’t have the time to write a new blog each week or several social media posts each day, and many have figured out that there’s plenty of good and relevant content available from the New York Times or even BuzzFeed to supplement your social media feed. Tread carefully, because even though that content is available and possibly even relevant, it doesn’t mean you should share non-unique content all the time. It’s a good rule of thumb to make every 3rd or 4th post 100% original. Otherwise, people are just going to go elsewhere for their content and products and not even bother with you at all, and your interaction and engagement numbers (not to mention your analytics and algorithms) are going to plummet, which is the opposite of what you want.

Use videos wherever possible — Do you watch cooking shows? Probably not that often anymore, and the reason for that is that recipe videos on social media have seen record trends this year. Why spend an hour watching a television show to get one recipe when you can spend two minutes and watch a funny character make the item right in front of you, and it’s edited for time. You can even mute the video and watch it at work, thanks to the text that now overlays most videos on social media for that very reason. People respond more to videos and all of the top trending sites know that. Bonus points if you are able to go live, as Facebook and other social media platforms are pushing live videos over previously recorded ones.

A picture is worth a thousand words — Pictures are incredibly effective at showcasing products, feelings, quotes, and even reviews of your product. Rather than writing something in text, try to overlay the text over a beautiful graphic for your post. Or just use a picture that states everything without words. Just make sure that your picture is in focus, not too dark, and that it’s obvious what it’s trying to portray. If you don’t have someone to edit and produce your graphics for you, try looking into a program like Canva or Easel.ly to help you out.

Games and giveaways are not to be forgotten — Last year I won a free haircut and color by guessing how many foil wrappers were in a hairstylist’s picture. I would have never known about her if not for the post going viral because everyone kept sharing it and commenting on it, hoping to win. Additionally, she picked up a lifelong customer, because I’ve been going to that hairdresser ever since.

Keep posting schedules consistent — LuLaRoe is a brand that has achieved super-fast growth by using a multi-sales consultant strategy, but additionally, they’ve given their consultants amazing social media training. One of the things that LuLaRoe is famous for is by establishing schedules for when individual consultants will do things. You know, for example, that Monday will be a live event, Tuesday will be an album shopping event, Wednesday is the day when you can request an outfit, Thursdays are for giveaways, Fridays new clothing arrives, and Saturday is for the football pool. By keeping posts consistent, customers know to check on certain days for certain things and will check often and on a set schedule, which is perfect for you to be able to cater to them. There’s nothing better than knowing that a particular customer will visit your website on a certain date and time. It’s almost like having a crystal ball into your company’s future.

There’s no set way that works for one person, so definitely explore your analytics and software programs and find what works for you. It’s easy to look and see which posts are getting liked and shared and which ones aren’t, but it definitely can get confusing if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Certainly, companies like Komaya are here to help you figure out what your numbers mean and what you can do to build engagement and therefore, sales, for a better and brighter future.

Marketing is a vital component to your business — an opportunity to have increased engagement with your audience, drive additional traffic to your website, and even increase your sales volume — ideally with the investment of a few minutes and a couple of well-phrased tweets. And yet, marketing can waste considerable amounts of your time when it is attempted without a clear goal or a focused purpose. Accordingly, here are four time-saving tips to make your social media accounts work better for you.

Create Your Content in Advance

Stopping throughout the day to write Facebook posts or to push other social media content not only takes time, but it also takes you away from the important business of the day. Researchers have found that it can take your brain as long as half an hour to return attention to the original task, and these thirty-minute breaks will compound every time you stop to post an update. Solve this problem by drafting all of your updates at the beginning of the week — or even the beginning of the month. You can always add tweaks to address with real-time developments that need to be referenced, but most of your updates should be ready to go ahead of time.

Limit Yourself to Only Two or Three Platforms

As the Pareto principle dictates, 80% of all results come from 20% of your efforts. This applies to managing your social media as well. You may be using a variety of social media platforms to push your business content, but the majority of their value is more than likely coming from only a minority of them. Use Google Analytics (or whatever data analytics might be built into your platforms) to determine which ones are giving you the most engagement, and then focus your efforts on those platforms.

Repurpose Existing Content

Blog posts, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn articles can provide value beyond the first time you share them. You may need to think a little creatively to bring a new focus to old material, but it isn’t that difficult. The first share can simply offer the title of the piece; the second, share a catchy quote of a paragraph from the body of the work; the third, ask a relevant business question that is answered by the content. Using your posts strategically in this fashion saves time and allows you to share the same idea with your audience multiple times, generating more substantial impact.

Measure Only What Matters

Now that social media is such an active presence in our daily lives, the individual platforms themselves offer tons of insights and statistics concerning each and every one of your posts. Not all of these will be useful, however, so you should be sure to track the ones that actually impact your business. For example, repeat visits, conversion rates, and total interactions can be infinitely more valuable than your number of followers, total site visits, or even the number of times your posts have been shared. You should also be aware of your customers’ loyalty and their total lifetime value to your business.

Over the past decade, a business’s online presence has been revolutionized from a single website to a complicated mix of social media platforms. Usually “complicated” is the kind of word that packs just enough negative connotation to make you cringe and shy away. But never fear! In this case, complicated is good. This complicated mix allows consumers the opportunity to interact with your business in a lot of different ways – with each medium offering a unique perspective on what your brand is all about. If executed properly, your social media mix can be the key to putting your brand ahead of competitors.

That all sounded great, right? Well here’s the catch: obtaining and maintaining an amazing online presence won’t happen overnight. Curating a social media mix that benefits your brand and suits your needs is the first obstacle, but then comes the challenge of managing all those separate accounts. In addition to a website, most businesses will have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn and more. One will find that effectively managing all these mediums on their own can be extremely time consuming and stressful. That my friends, is where social media scheduling tools come in.

With the right tool, or mix of tools, you can schedule out posts for weeks in advance, freeing up your schedule and reducing stress. Without further ado, here are a couple of our favorite social media scheduling tools for your business:

Save time by managing all your social media marketing efforts from a single dashboard. With Hootsuite’s platform, you get the tools to manage all your social profiles and automatically find and schedule effective social content.

“Measure your social ROI”

Make smarter, data-driven social media marketing decisions with confidence. Hootsuite’s real-time analytics let you spot trends as they develop and drill down for insights on how your social content is performing.

If you’re not convinced Hootsuite is right for your business, not to worry! You can try their limited (3 social profiles) free plan, so you can get familiar with their platform. They also offer a 30 day free trial for most of their business plans to test their social media management offerings. After that, business plans range from $19+ per month.

Powerful publishing tools make it easy to share content across multiple social networks with one click.

While Buffer offers team and agency plans starting at $99 per month, they do have a free and $10/month pricing for limited social media networks. Buffer also offers a free trial for businesses looking to test out their full-fledged services.

While Hootsuite and Buffer are great options for a business seeking to get control of their online presence, it is important to note that these tools are by no means the only ones that can benefit your brand. There is an abundance of other resources available that can assist you in taking your online presence to the next level (to read about some of those, click here). Hootsuite and Buffer were chosen because they are fairly simple to use, and they do it all.

https://www.komaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/shutterstock_224826490-Sm.jpg373500Julianne Smithhttps://www.komaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Komaya-Logo-2018-4.pngJulianne Smith2017-05-03 21:30:502017-10-04 18:42:45Taking the Stress out of Social Media: An Introduction to Social Media Management Tools